End of the World Prediction for 2012 Will Hopefully Spark Action

Brandon Sun “Small
World” Column, Monday, December 26 / 11Zack
Gross

As many of you have already heard, the
world is due to come to an end on December 21st, 2012.

This
is a prediction from the Mayan calendar, of global cataclysm at the
winter solstice in the coming year. It has sprung from the
Mayans to television and movie blockbusters and hundreds of books and
web sites about Doomsday 2012. The end of the world will be
caused by a reverse in Earth’s magnetic field, or a 90-degree flip of
Earth’s rotational axis, or bombardment by asteroids or comets, gamma
or other lethal rays – or it may be a hoax!

There are many who debunk the 2012 myth,
including NASA, the National Geographic Society and many other
scientific institutions, who say it is all just another bit of hysteria
from religious and other “spiritual” sources, who have been wrong many
times before.

So, the good news is that there is little
chance that the world will end in 2012. The bad news is that
the challenges facing our planet as we enter the New Year are serious
and, generally speaking, there is not an honest effort being made to
understand and deal with them.

Degradation of our natural environment
is the first big hurdle that humankind needs to leap.

The big
stories are the melting of our glaciers, the flooding of our low-lying
lands and the frequency of major storms that have devastated people and
property from the US Southeast and mid-West to the Philippines, the
Caribbean and Europe.

The backstories are the open-pit mines
and oil/gas operations, the destruction of forests and the
mono-cropping and chemicalization of agriculture that have affected the
environment as well as people’s land ownership, cultures and human
rights in many regions.

The next challenge is civil and
international conflict that kills tens of thousands of people without
us really noticing.

The big stories are the people’s
movements in the Middle East, fighting against dictators, and Western
troops battling in the War on Terror.

Behind the scenes,
4,500 US troops have died and 30,000 have been injured fighting that
War in Afghanistan over the past nine years.

As well, Western nations
fear to confront certain regimes for fear of losing oil supplies or
political alliances. The cellphones we use, the jewels we
wear and the chocolate we eat have become sources of revenue for
killing forces throughout the Third World.

Our global economy is the next factor in
our own slower end to the world as we know it. The story we
get on the news is about high-rolling financiers – the International
Monetary Fund (run by the world’s economic elite) – standing up for
viable economies by getting rid of waste and sloth. The
backstory is about the rich cutting programs for the poor, wages for
workers and taxes for the rest.

The Occupy Movement are dirty
hippies who need to get a job while those with financial clout have
taken charge to set things right. No doubt, they have taken
charge, but we need a more balanced view of world finances – the
winners and losers – so that we as citizens and voters can better
understand the situation.

And, speaking of governance, we live in
a world where young people feel disconnected from the political process
and many older people feel cynical after their participation in the
process has not yielded better results. While less than 50%
of voters are casting ballots in federal and provincial elections, a
recent Winnipeg City Council bi-election attracted only 20% of the
eligible electorate. Use of food banks in Canada, meanwhile,
has gone up 25% since our recession began, with almost a million people
accessing their services in recent years. Voter numbers down
– food bank users up – apples and oranges?

But, there is always hope. The
issues we face as humanity are urgent but maybe they will spur our
leaders to action (or maybe we will).

So far, the tendency is
to focus on the big story, while the backstory may be where the work
needs to be done.

Scholars say that the Maya were not clear
that the world would end in 2012.

The Dresden Codex, an
attempt to decipher the prediction, says that the Maya should not be
taken literally, but rather as a lesson about human behaviour.

At the close of an era, just as at the
close of a year, when people make those fateful New Year’s Resolutions,
the Codex says, humanity will take stock and resolve to begin living
better.

The Mayan prediction is actually a warning and an
exhortation for us to see the urgency in the issues facing our world
and take action to address them, to everyone’s benefit.Zack Gross works
for the Manitoba Council for International
Co-operation (MCIC), a
coalition of more than 40 international development organizations.